


Sherlock, Locked

by wendymarlowe



Series: John and Sherlock's Kinky First Times [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cock Cages, Kink Meme, M/M, Masturbation, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-07 07:52:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendymarlowe/pseuds/wendymarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John finds a key.  Sherlock is very, very eager to get it back.</p><p>(Part of my "John and Sherlock's Kinky First Times" series of shorts, all revolving around the same basic theme of "John and Sherlock get sexy for the first time and also discover some kinky stuff about each other.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've got several ideas for short fics all revolving around the same basic theme of "John and Sherlock get sexy for the first time and also discover some kinky stuff about each other," so I decided to bundle them all together in a series. Please feel free to suggest ideas/kinks for future installments! Next chapter coming soon . . .

The first time John found the key, it was on the counter in the kitchen, halfway between the toaster and the sugar bowl. It was obviously too small to be for a door - some sort of diary or jewelry box, maybe. Sherlock must have put it down to fiddle with one of his experiments (he only rarely actually went in the kitchen to make something as plebeian as tea, so an experiment seemed the much more likely explanation) and then must have forgotten it. John pocketed the key and then forgot it just as thoroughly in the rush to get down to Lloyd’s and catch up to Sherlock before he tried to apprehend the adulterous banker and her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend’s new mistress by himself.

Thus it was fairly late in the evening when John found himself curled up in the armchair, trying to word things properly for his blog, and realized Sherlock was storming around the flat in a tightly bundled ball of frustration.

“I can’t have lost it. It can’t be _lost_ , John, so where is it? It was supposed to be somewhere obvious!”

John sighed and took the bait. “What did you lose, Sherlock?”

“ _My key!_ Little silver thing, opens a lock, very necessary for me to find _right now_ and I deleted where I put it and now I can’t find it.”

 _Oh._ “You left it on the kitchen counter. It’s in my pocket.”

Sherlock’s sudden stillness was startling. He turned only his head, pinning John with that fanatical energy in his gaze. “I need that key.”

John knew he probably should have just handed it over, but it was late and he was sore from chasing Sherlock through four blocks’ worth of back alleys so the damn detective wouldn’t get himself shot before the police could corral the bank-robbing ex-boyfriend and perhaps John wasn’t in the most generous of moods. And it was interesting to see Sherlock in this state - usually he was more controlled than this.

“What’s it for?”

Sherlock’s brows lowered. “Give me the key, John,” he demanded.

“Not until you tell me what it’s for.”

“Why would you care?”

John shrugged. “I’m curious.”

Sherlock glared at him for a long minute, but didn’t answer. John eventually shrugged again and went back to typing.

“John.”

“No.”

A long pause. “Fine.” And then John heard Sherlock stomp off to his room.

***

Sherlock was in a snit for the next two days. Usually there were at least three or four days after a case where he was relatively normal (for Sherlock), starting new experiments and poking at his blog and actually being civil to John most of the time, but the key clearly had him worked up. John enjoyed it, in a perverse sort of way - it wasn’t often he got to see the detective so riled up about something outside his control, and for once this was something John could out-stubborn him about. If Sherlock didn’t want to explain, John didn’t particularly see the need to return the key.

It wasn’t for a case, or Sherlock would have said so. It didn’t appear to be for any experiments, new or ongoing. John rather suspected it was a diary, and the idea of Sherlock keeping a locked diary like a schoolgirl was terribly amusing. Maybe John would demand to read a page or two before he gave the key back . . .

Sherlock searched John’s room, of course, but John was prepared for that. He kept the key in his pocket at all times, and he even took it with him into the shower so Sherlock couldn’t rifle through his clothes that way. His favorite pajamas had a convenient drawstring on the waistband, which he threaded through the hole in the key, and he was fairly sure he would have awakened if Sherlock had tried to go anywhere near _that_. It was rather fun to see his flatmate get more and more agitated as time went on - Sherlock would have to apologize and explain eventually -

The apology never came, but the mystery was solved just over two days later. John was sitting at the kitchen table, thoughtfully munching a piece of toast and trying to decide what to do with the two hours he had before he had to be at work, when Sherlock appeared in the doorway. His eyes were bleary and his hair was even more of a mess than usual, and he was still in his pajamas.

“Key.”

John took another bite of toast. “Tell me what it’s for and I’ll happily give it to you.”

Sherlock growled and glared. “Key,” he repeated.

“Heard you the first time.” John let his gaze wander toward the refrigerator - probably wasn’t any milk for tea, but it might be worth checking -

“Fine.”

John looked up in surprise, waiting for Sherlock’s explanation. But the detective didn’t explain, didn’t say anything, just shoved down his pajama trousers and _what the fuck?_ John wasn’t sure whether he’d said it aloud, but Sherlock read it on his face either way.

Sherlock glanced down at his groin, where his cock was currently locked into a shiny chrome contraption with little bars and a serious-looking lock dangling from below. “It’s a cock cage, John, which I’m only telling you because you insisted on a damn explanation. I need my key back.”

John knew the devices existed, had seen them occasionally for sale in the less seedy adult shops, but finding out that Sherlock actually _used_ one . . .

He stood abruptly, threw the key down on the kitchen table, and fled to his room. And spent the two hours before his shift hiding from his flatmate.


	2. Chapter 2

The second time John found the key, it was during another case. A Japanese dignitary’s wife had disappeared from her hotel suite, despite none of the security footage catching anyone going in or out. Sherlock was already at the hotel, probably storming to and fro around the suite and driving Lestrade around the bend, but John’s day at the surgery had been terrible and he really felt like he needed a shower and a change of clothes first before trying to keep up with his flatmate. He walked through the door, intending to just pop in and out and catch up to Sherlock before the detective alienated the rest of the police force once and for all, but the sight of the kitchen stopped him. Or rather, the smell.

Christ, what had Sherlock been doing in there all day? John was rather afraid to look more closely, but he couldn’t resist. Whatever-it-was on the table was oozing a sickly pearlescent gray slime, the source of the odor, but clearly Sherlock had been at it for some time. There were droplets of the slime _all over the damn room_. A spray of them across the refrigerator door, smears on the countertops, even telltale speckles on the ceiling. _Bloody hell_. It smelled like Sherlock had exploded a sewage treatment plant - and knowing Sherlock, that may have been exactly what he was modeling.

John held his breath all through his shower, to no particular effect. His desire to say “screw Sherlock” and avoid him altogether for a while (to avoid the inevitable need to punch him in the face for what he did to the flat) warred with the need to _get the fuck away from the smell_. He was still wavering when he noticed the key, sitting on the floor underneath the sink. Probably not deliberately placed there - it might have been in Sherlock’s pocket, might have just been dropped there, but John would have bet a fair sum of money Sherlock didn’t yet know he had lost it.

He debated, but remembering how irate losing the key had made Sherlock last time . . . John stuck it in his pocket.

***

It was almost midnight when they got back to the flat. The dignitary’s wife was sick of her husband’s philandering, apparently, and had bribed the head of hotel security to smuggle her out of the building and into what she had intended to be her new apartment, where she would wait until the divorce could go through. Sherlock had been supremely uninterested in the human aspect of the case, giving up and dumping the whole thing on Lestrade the moment he deduced that hotel security was behind the whole thing. “It’s _boring_ ,” he whined to John. “Not a locked room mystery at all! Just another boring cheating spouse and a boring cover-up. Not even original - this happens a dozen times a year. No idea why Lestrade even wanted me there.”

John had thought it was rather sensible of her, actually, and after meeting the dignitary he didn’t blame the woman one bit for wanting to disappear as soon as possible. He chose not to point out to Sherlock that she hadn’t actually _intended_ to leave a locked room mystery - she had no particular reason to stage a mystery at all. She had just needed time to put some physical space between herself and her husband, and this was a convenient way to do it, and the fact that her choice of methods left the world’s only consulting detective bored was hardly her own fault. The whole world didn’t revolve around Sherlock.

But he knew he wouldn’t get that through Sherlock’s head, so he didn’t bother to say it. And he didn’t bother to say anything about the smell in the flat, either, even though it was just as potent as ever when they opened the door. John resolved to just ignore it. For the first time in quite a while he had the upper hand, and once Sherlock realized . . .

John curled up in his favorite spot, the armchair, and pulled out his laptop. Sherlock’s eyes rested on him for several seconds, undoubtedly assessing his complete non-reaction to the state of the kitchen, but when John refused to look up, Sherlock let it go. _At least that proves he knows he made a mess_ , John thought.

He wasn’t really working. He had vague plans for checking on his blog traffic and drafting up some thoughts for how he’d write up the most recent case, but John’s attention was primarily on Sherlock. Who was gradually building up steam as he stalked around the flat, searching for something John knew he’d never find.

“Found your key again, by the way,” John said as casually as he could without looking up from his laptop. In his peripheral vision, John could see Sherlock’s feet cease stomping around and instead come to plant themselves directly in front of him. Sherlock stood silently, hand out, glaring at him.

“Key,” he demanded.

John plastered on a smile he knew Sherlock would see right through and would probably irritate the hell out of him besides. “Later,” he shot back. “I know you, Sherlock, and I know you’ll leave that . . . mess . . . sitting on the table until practically forever if I don’t clean it up. You count on me getting disgusted with your experiments before you do.”

“I clean,” Sherlock protested.

“You _have cleaned_ , a few things, once or twice,” John corrected him. “That doesn’t mean you _clean_. But this experiment, whatever it was, is going to have Mrs. Hudson and possibly everyone else on Baker Street complaining about the smell. You get your key back when you’ve cleaned it up, and not a moment before.”

Sherlock scowled. “Cleaning is _boring_ , John.”

John smiled again, blandly. “Exactly.”

Sherlock stood there a minute longer before realizing John was deadly serious. He turned and stomped away to his room, sulking like a toddler.

John felt the confrontation went fairly well, even despite the persistent smell.

***

He woke up to early-morning sunlight on his face. Barely past dawn. Not nearly enough sleep, honestly, but for some reason John’s body had made the decision to be awake and semi-alert at ridiculous-o’clock and there didn’t seem to be much he could do about it. Plus he had to piss. John grumbled and got out of bed.

He was already past the doorway to the kitchen and into the bathroom when his brain finally caught up and forced him to do a double-take. He backed up to the open doorway and stared.

There was Sherlock, awake and cheerful (Sherlock was _never_ cheerful in the mornings, even on a case), bustling about the kitchen. The _clean_ kitchen. Making tea.

John knew his jaw was hanging open, but he couldn’t be bothered to close it right at the moment. _Sherlock. Cleaned._

“Good morning, John,” Sherlock announced in a frightfully chirpy voice. “I’ve just finished mopping, so the floor’s still a bit wet. Fancy some tea?”

John dragged a hand over his face and turned away. “Got to pee first. And wake up.”

He took his time in the loo, trying to process everything. Sherlock actually _cleaned_. Pretty thoroughly, apparently, judging from how nearly everything in the kitchen was currently sparkling. And he made _tea_. John shuffled back to the kitchen.

“I was planning to bring you a cup in a minute,” Sherlock announced when John reappeared in the doorway. “I wanted to finish cleaning out the microwave first.”

“You’re . . . cleaning the microwave?”

“It had some exploded eyeball in it still. Sorry about that.” Sherlock grabbed a chair and swung it around so he was straddling it backwards, leaning on the top with arms akimbo.

John sighed and sank into the other chair and accepted the tea.

“So. You have my key.”

“Yes, I wondered if that was what this was about.”

Sherlock’s smile bordered on manic. “Not going to demand to see the lock again this time?”

“No.” John scrubbed a hand over his face. _It’s too damn early for this_ . . . But in the list of strange things his flatmade had done, he supposed, this really wasn’t all that odd. At least, once you got past “Sherlock” and “penis” in the same mental sentence.

“So . . . key?” Sherlock held out his hand.

“Talk first.”

“You really want me to talk about it?”

“No.” John kept his eyes firmly on the wall behind Sherlock’s head. “But I’m going to ask anyway. It’s not a . . . medical thing, is it?”

Sherlock laughed, his “I can’t believe I have to humor this peon” laugh. John hated that laugh. “No, not medical,” Sherlock said. “I just find that it helps me concentrate while on a case.”

“Oh? How’s that work?”

Sherlock pinned him with a dark stare. “You’re the doctor - I deleted the specifics after I had ascertained it wasn’t harmful. It just . . . helps keep away distractions. Easier to focus on the important facts.”

“Distractions like sex?”

Sherlock snorted.

“Not that I think you’re going out and shagging people whenever my back is turned,” John quickly amended. “It’s just . . . I guess I always assumed you were asexual.”

Now it was Sherlock’s turn to boggle at him. “I - what - _no_ , John. Not asexual. Just . . . very picky. Do we really have to talk about this?”

John winced. “No. Yes. Hell, Sherlock, I don’t know - do we? Frankly, I’m rather worried that you’d lock yourself in something you couldn’t pick, and then lose the key.”

“I didn’t lose it, I deleted it.”

At John’s confused look, Sherlock elaborated. “It’s on purpose - I put the key somewhere and delete the data. When I have the time again after the case, I look for it.”

“To keep you from temptation?”

“Something like that.”

John swallowed. “Does it . . . does it hurt? I’ll take your word for it that it’s not harmful, but -”

“It’s . . . complicated.”

John had never heard that tone of voice from Sherlock before, and he met his flatmate’s eyes without thinking. Sherlock allowed the connection.

“It doesn’t hurt, not really,” he admitted. “Only a bit if my body is trying to get erect, and that goes away soon enough. Operant conditioning helps - by now, I’ve learned to instinctively avoid anything that will get me hard, so I don’t even have to think about it anymore. It’s possible to wear the cage for weeks, months, even, with no medical issues other than making personal hygiene a bit more difficult, although I’ve never had to go that long.”

“And what happens when you take it off?”

Sherlock fixed him with a dark look. “What do you think?”

John could feel himself blushing.

“So can I have my key back now? Don’t think I don’t see where you keep it when you sleep.”

John glanced down - and yes, the key was dangling from the drawstring at the waistband of his pajama trousers. _Damn, that’s awkward_. He was half hard just from this conversation - perfectly civil, sitting at the kitchen table over tea like a couple of old ladies - and he really didn’t need Sherlock’s attention on that portion of his anatomy.

He untied the drawstring, slid the key across the table to Sherlock, and beat a strategic retreat back to his bedroom.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took a while to update, but hopefully this is the lemon y'all were waiting for :-)

The third time John found the key, it was blatantly left on his bedside table while he was in the shower. Lestrade had just texted not half an hour before - a man had spontaneously combusted while standing in the parking lot at a petrol station. Sherlock yelled something through the bathroom door at John, who couldn’t hear a word of it, but evidently Sherlock assumed that was enough because he was gone by the time John was out of the bathroom. But the key was there, innocently sitting on a note with “2100 Saintsbury Ave.” written on it in Sherlock’s spiky scrawl, so John got dressed and stuck it in his pocket.

He had plenty of time to think about it, as it turned out, because the case stretched on for days. The human fireball was an obstetrician in his daily life, which provided a stunning number of potential suspects. The doctor had been in practice for twenty years, and the inevitable less-than-perfect outcomes of labor for even just a tiny percentage of his patients added up to lot of unhappy people.

John found himself watching Sherlock more closely than ever. The detective was absolutely in his element - complete with a manic dash across London to investigate an estranged sister and four long hours spent obsessing over the obstetrician’s preferred brand of cigarettes, leaving John to angrily order Sherlock out of the flat if he insisted on stinking up the kitchen with smoke under the guise of an “experiment.” (John flatly refused to allow Sherlock to smoke them all himself, so Sherlock was forced to rig up a cigarette-smoking machine. He completely failed to see how doing this on the kitchen table didn’t entirely negate John’s objections.)

Even with all of Sherlock’s annoying habits at the forefront, though, John realized he was slowly becoming tuned in to something humming just below the surface. He couldn’t decide whether it was something that had always been there or whether it was something new, but there was something electric about the way Sherlock looked at him. Still just as sharp, observing everything about him with a glance and (presumably) dismissing random parts while remembering others, but now there was some sort of shared understanding between the two of them. Something they couldn’t talk about in front of Lestrade and Donovan and Anderson, but it was there nonetheless and it didn’t seem to be going away.

And John wasn’t sure how he felt about it. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to just toss the key in the sugar bowl (or, better yet, tie it around the handle of the mop bucket, where Sherlock would be sure to never see it) and tell Sherlock to deduce its location on his own, but he didn’t do that. He could have said something to Sherlock, but he didn’t do that either. If John was being honest with himself, he’d have to admit he rather _liked_ the intense way Sherlock’s gaze landed on him. It was personal. Intimate. Way more intimate than two not-gay not-shagging flatmates had any excuse to be. And that didn’t bother him as much as he thought it would have.

All in all, it was four and a half days until Sherlock caught the murderer. It wasn’t because the killer was smart - on the contrary, the man had been so inept that he accidentally murdered the wrong victim. The whole obstetrics thing had been the wrong tack entirely; the doctor just had the poor fortune to stand on the exact spot where the killer had soaked the ground with gasoline (reasoning that the petrol station would mask the smell) and then had been stupid enough to throw down a still-lit cigarette instead of tossing it into the perfectly good bin not five feet away. The intended victim - the murderer’s business partner - hadn’t even noticed his car was low on petrol yet. The killer was creative in his methods, but utterly stupid when it came to controlling the timing.

John and Sherlock arrived back at the flat just after noon. Sherlock had been keyed up in the taxi all the way back, chattering on about the case and flammability and the stupidity of people in general and murderers specifically and John had every expectation Sherlock would continue his tirade for at least another two hours.

Instead, Sherlock waited only long enough for both of them to get into the living room before he slammed the door behind John and whirled on him.

“You have my key.”

There was no point denying it, but John refrained from digging it out of his pocket just yet. “Why did you leave it somewhere so obvious? You practically threw it at me.”

The little tic in Sherlock’s jaw began to twitch, signaling some extreme reaction he was trying to rein in. His voice, though, remained perfectly neutral as he answered. “I liked knowing that you had it. Kept me from temptation.”

John snorted. “What temptation is that, exactly?”

He had expected something about _temptation to tear apart the flat looking for it_ , or maybe _temptation to obsess over it instead of devoting my most brilliant mind to solving the case_. Sherlock was apparently refusing to answer, though, which spawned a new line of thought in John’s brain. What if the temptation revolved around him?

It made a strange sort of sense. Sherlock, who was so reserved as to appear asexual to everyone else, but who had actually dropped his pants for John before. Who had admitted he wasn’t asexual, just . . . picky. Who had been eyeing John with rather more focus than necessary for the last four and a half days, and if John was being honest with himself, probably much longer than that. _What if I’m the temptation? What if, when he gets that thing off and runs off to his room for a good wank, he’s thinking about me?_

The thought . . . didn’t bother him. Intrigued him a bit, actually. Even as a straight bloke ( _a soon-to-be-formerly-straight bloke?_ , a voice in John’s head asked), John could absolutely appreciate that Sherlock was a good-looking man. Handsome, even. All that pale skin . . .

John sucked in a breath. He shouldn’t be hard. He absolutely, positively shouldn’t have gotten a sudden hard-on from thinking about his flatmate naked. _I’m not gay; I’m not . . ._

He suddenly became aware that the room was too quiet. Sherlock had never answered his question, just was watching him with that omnipotent look . . .

. . . which slowly lowered to John’s trousers. _Fuck_. John could tell from Sherlock’s expression that it was obvious John was aroused. From talking about tempting Sherlock. And Sherlock was perfectly happy with that result.

Right, change of subject . . . “I feel like I ought to demand something from you before I give this key back,” John said. His voice didn’t even crack.

Sherlock raised one eyebrow.

And John thought quickly. “Something you wouldn’t . . . ah. Here’s the deal: you call Molly and apologize for what you said to her yesterday afternoon, and I will give the key back. _Call_ , not text. You were being an arse and we both know it and I think it’s important you at least pretend to value her input.” He paused and dragged in a breath - Sherlock’s unblinking _look_ was disconcerting. “You know it’s not fair of you to take advantage of that . . . that whatever-it-is she has for you. You’re only nice to her when she has something you want.”

The heat in Sherlock’s eyes never dimmed, but his lips curved into a smile. “I have a counter-offer.”

John’s heart started pounding. “Oh?” he choked out.

“Mmmm,” Sherlock growled. “You give me back the key and I’ll suck you off.”

John swallowed. Hard. “You - you’ll -” He swallowed again. “Sherlock, I never said -”

“I know you didn’t,” Sherlock purred. “But you want me to. Oh, how you want me to. Want me to run through my deductions, John?” His grin turned feral. “You like it when I do that. I can see your eyes dilated. You’re breathing faster. Your pulse is pounding - I can _see_ it in your neck.” Sherlock took one step toward John, then another, backing him up until John’s calves hit the armchair. “You’re blushing, but it’s not embarrassment - no, you’re aroused. Aching for me. And you’re dying to know what my lips would feel like around your cock. You’ve never had that from another man, have you? No, I thought not. So it’s just for me then - I like that. I want to taste you.”

John closed his eyes. “ _Fuck,_ Sherlock -”

But that was as far as he got, because Sherlock’s hand shot out and _shoved_ , and John fell backward onto the chair. Sherlock followed immediately, pinning John’s thighs down with his forearms, his face only inches from John’s.

“Say yes, John,” Sherlock growled.

John’s hips twitched of their own volition. “God, yes,” he breathed.

And that was all it took. Sherlock’s talented fingers had John’s trousers unbuttoned in no time flat, and then John was free of his boxers and Sherlock was focused on his cock with the fanatical devotion he usually reserved for severed body parts. John knew he was panting, already straining for Sherlock’s touch, and Sherlock didn’t make him wait.

The first brush of Sherlock’s lips was almost ethereal in its softness. John had been given blowjobs before, of course, but this was _different_ , it was _Sherlock_ , and -

“Fuck,” he groaned, when Sherlock finally took the tip of him into his mouth and sucked. The rumble of Sherlock’s low chuckle roared through him. There was something absolutely indecent about the way Sherlock moved his mouth, something about the way he rubbed with the flat of his tongue and tightened his lips at the same time and then John discovered his own hand tangled in Sherlock’s hair and he had no memory of putting it there.

Sherlock needed no real guidance, though. _He’s so bloody good at this . . ._ John surrendered to the sensations, to the way Sherlock’s light teasing intensified the hand wrapped around his shaft, not quite tight to the point of pain, but so fucking amazing when Sherlock combined that simple movement with what he was doing with his mouth . . . John became aware of noises coming from his throat, needy little whimpers, and he knew without looking down that Sherlock was immensely turned on.

 _Or not - he’s still wearing the cage._ The thought should _not_ been as hot as it was. Sherlock, practically burrowing his way into John’s lap via John’s dick in his mouth, obviously turned on, but he still wasn’t hard. Couldn’t get hard until John gave up the key and let him out of his shiny chrome cage. Had to wait for John to give him permission to release all that pent-up energy.

And _damn_ Sherlock could do pent-up energy in spades. John’s eyes rolled back in his head as Sherlock executed a complicated maneuver with his tongue and his fingers on John’s cock and his other hand massaging John’s bollocks. This was good, it was amazing, it was _oh God -_

He tried to push Sherlock’s head away when he felt himself about to come, but Sherlock dodged his hand and persisted. And John _came._ With something akin to a shout. His hips bucked and his cock was suddenly all the way in Sherlock’s mouth, butting up against the back of his throat, and then John was shuddering and Sherlock stayed with him the entire time, until John was limp and shivering. Only then did Sherlock let go and rock back on his heels. With a damned smirk on his face.

John couldn’t muster the energy to be peeved at that smirk. “Fuuuuuuuuu….” Hell, he couldn’t muster the energy to finish the damned word.

Sherlock’s smirk transformed into a grin. “God, I love that lost look in your eyes. Just blew your mind as well, didn’t I?”

John blinked at him, still a bit shaky on the whole “speech” thing.

“Excellent.” Sherlock’s grin gained a sharper edge. “Key, please?”

It took a moment, but John got his arm muscles under control enough to dig the key out of his pocket. Sherlock plucked it out of his fingers and turned, clearly headed for his bedroom, but John’s hand shot out and caught the edge of Sherlock’s coat. Sherlock froze and turned back, very slowly.

“Wait.”

Sherlock stood perfectly still. John forced his body to cooperate, to sit up, to lean forward and take the key back.

“John -”

“Hush. Let me.” John didn’t let himself think too much about what he was doing, just reached up to unbutton Sherlock’s trousers and let them slide down his long legs. Sherlock’s boxers soon followed, until he was standing in front of the armchair in his coat and shirt and cock cage and everything else was pooled around his feet. He still wasn’t moving. John twisted the padlock sideways a bit and slid the key in, there was a _click_ , and then it was done.

It took a few moments to figure out how to get the cage off - the padlock slid out of the hole, and then a ring unclamped, and then finally the cage itself slid forwards off Sherlock’s flaccid cock. They both let out a breath as it came off. John let the whole apparatus drop to the floor.

Sherlock cleared his throat, but John spoke first. “I want you to - do it here. Show me.” He sat back in the chair, purposely keeping his hands at his sides. “I want to see you come.”

Sherlock’s lips parted - preparation to say something dismissive? - but then his mouth closed again. He made a tiny humming sound, but he didn’t walk away. (Not that he could have, really, with his trousers around his ankles, but still . . .) John kept his gaze carefully on Sherlock’s groin.

And slowly, Sherlock complied. His hand drifted downward to cup himself, and all it took was two quick tugs and he was mostly erect. Four more and there was already a pearly drop at the tip of his cock, a hint of things to come.

John couldn’t stop looking at that single drop of moisture. It was a weird signifier that Sherlock was actually human, wasn’t all just brain and ego. Sherlock’s eyes were closed now and he was flushed all over as he pumped himself - rather faster than John liked when he took himself in hand, but amazing to watch nonetheless.

Sherlock came a minute later. It was quite possibly the most erotic sight John had ever witnessed.


	4. Epilogue

The fourth time John found the key, it was waiting for him on the kitchen table next to a steaming cup of tea the very next morning. The tea was made correctly, milk and all, which was a first for Sherlock. It was accompanied by a note:

J -

Made tea. Remembered milk. Triple homicide @ London Eye, no one else in compartment. Lestrade thinks murder-suicide but no knife. Come when awake. 

Left you a key.

\- S

John relaxed into the chair and sipped his tea. Sherlock could have banged on his door and woken him up, he supposed, but it was rather nice that he hadn’t. John hadn’t expected to be in possession of the key again so soon, honestly, but now that he was, he might as well make the most of it.

***

He didn’t get to the crime scene until nearly an hour later, but that was okay. Sherlock was perfectly capable of dealing just fine without him for a while, and John had been busy with more important things. He now had a whole list of ideas for what he wanted Sherlock to do in exchange for that key . . .


End file.
